Modern computer systems may be installed with more than one operating system. A common approach for changing which operating system is running on the computer system involves deciding which operating system to load at the time of booting or powering on of the computer system. For example, when a computer system is initially booted, the firmware may allow the user to choose which operating system installed on the computer system is loaded. If, after booting the computer system, the user wishes to use a different operating system, then the user would perform a hard reboot or a soft reboot of the computer system so that the user can make a different selection of which operating system to load. Many users are frustrated with a need to power down their computer system to use another operating system due to both the time and disruption involved.
Other approaches for using two or more operating systems on a single computer system involve the use of virtualized environments in which multiple operating system run simultaneously in isolated computing environments, such as a virtual machine, on a single computer system. A disadvantage of this approach is that virtualizing operating systems in this manner is quite taxing on the CPU and requires the utilization of a large amount of computer system resources.